Bill Cosby Is Over

I’m just going to call it. Bill Cosby is done. There will be no comeback, there will be no damage control, there will be no prevailing core of true believers tipping public opinion back in his favor. It’s over.

At this point, at least 14 women have accused Cosby of raping or sexually assaulting them, using a combination of drugs, physical force, and his own fame. More have reportedly come forward privately, unable or unwilling to confront such a powerful, rich man in public. On Cosby’s part, he’s responded by shaking his head in silence and dismissing the allegations through an attorney as "discredited" (they weren’t). In a statement on his website posted Sunday, Cosby’s lawyer wrote, "The fact that they are being repeated does not make them true."

Sure. Okay. But the fact that a rich, charismatic alleged abuser apparently managed to shut a lot of women up doesn’t make those women liars either.

He needs weak, powerless, controllable women who won’t fight back or who can’t fight back. By introducing drugs into the mixture and doping up women, he puts you into a position where you can’t do anything. You do not have any control. I’ve had some victims reach out to me since the Daily Mail article came out, random women who are also victims of Bill Cosby who are not documented, who found me and reached out to me and gave me their story who will not talk. I’m working on them, but they will not talk. Some of them escaped by crawling out of the door and crawling into the street and somehow getting home, barely conscious.

There simply is no coming back from that, and it’s telling that Cosby and his lawyer haven’t even really tried.

Cosby cannot, at age 77, slough off the "rapist" label this time around ("alleged" or not), especially in a culture that—in my opinion—is finally beginning to set some boundaries around women’s safety and men’s entitlement. This shit does not fly anymore. No one on earth has enough good will in the bank to weather the phrase "he drugged and raped me," repeated several times, with nearly identical details, by entirely unconnected women.

And let’s be honest. There wasn’t going to be a real comeback anyway. Cosby was a pioneer. Cosby meant a lot to a lot of people, myself included. Cosby significantly changed white America’s perceptions of black families. But Cosby’s views on race and politics are offensive and regressive in 2014. He was over before he was over.

And his willingness to go to the mat for racial respectability politics isn’t unrelated to his alleged penchant for raping women and then fame-intimidating them into silence. Both are slimy, covert ways to blame victims for their own victimization. Black people aren’t oppressed—he wrong kind of black people are just holding everyone back. We can’t stop rapists—women just need to work harder to avoid them. Pull your pants up, son. You drank too much, sweetie. Speak proper English if you want to make a living wage. If you didn’t like it, then why didn’t you fight harder?

Both arguments boil down, essentially, to "Yeah, but what were you wearing?" And sorry, Bill, but if there’s one concrete thing feminism has accomplished in the past decade, it’s to cement "Yeah, but what were you wearing?" as the classic catchphrase of abusers and apologists. It’s over. It’s done.

Cosby needs to throw in the towel and go live out the rest of his life in cushy ignominy. If that seems unfair, well, tough shit. It is the consequence of being a bad person. People do not want to buy your product anymore. You know what’s really unfair? The 60 percent of rape victims who never even report, because they know the system is set up to discredit and undermine them, and the 97 percent of rapists who will never go to jail, because victims’ accounts are deemed inherently questionable. I’d say having to spend the rest of your life relaxing in your mansion is a pretty okay "punishment," when the alternative is potentially going to prison for rape.

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